‘God, I forgot you didn’t know.’ Lucas’ eyes lit up, smiling at the kitchen counter as he tapped his fingers. ‘Clare got a cochlear implant. She can hear a fairly decent amount now. Put her off her balance quite a bit at the beginning, but…’
‘That’s amazing, Luke! That’s…it’s just so great! ’ Megan thought back to the shy little girl with the reddish brown hair who always used to look up at her with those massive eyes, lipreading and gesturing.
‘I’m sad I couldn’t see her,’ Megan said, ‘I’ve missed her. And Skye’s an ace with sign language, she would have loved to have a proper conversation.’
‘Your daughter knows how to sign,’ Lucas said, ‘but you don’t have any deaf people in your family. Is your partner deaf?’
‘Partner?’
‘Jeremy? Isn’t that what Skye said? The guy who told her what making assumptions made you?’ His face was inscrutable, but there was such an air of nonchalance in his voice that she might have believed he cared.
‘Jeremy is a lodger who lives with us,’ Megan explained, ‘he’s been a good friend, and bad influence for years.’
‘So you’re not married then.’
‘Why would I be married?’
Lucas shrugged, not looking at her. ‘Dunno. Just what people do, isn’t it?’
‘You married?’
He looked around him at his flat. ‘Does it look like I’m married?’
She followed his gaze, taking in the throw cushions, the kaftan arranged on the edge of the sofa, the candles burning on the mantlepiece. ‘Well, kinda.’
‘I was. For a bit,’ he offered, blue eyes waiting for her to make a judgement.
‘What happened?’
‘We were young, we met on the road. Musicians aren’t meant to marry. At least not while you’re touring. We broke up. I wrote a song called “One Month Divorced”. She wrote a song called “My Bastard Guitarist Love”. She got a top twenty hit, and I moved back here. End of.’
Megan suspected there was more to it than that, but she wasn’t in any position to start digging for information. She picked up her mug and moved over to the sofa, relaxing into it. She felt the give as he sat down next to her, close enough to feel his warmth, but not close enough to touch. Her heart started rattling a little in her chest, and she tapped her fingertips together in a steady rhythm.
‘Am I making you nervous, Meg?’ Lucas asked with a smile in his voice.
‘No, why?’
‘Because you’re doing that fingertip thing you always used to do.’
She looked down at her hands, and balled them into fists.
‘Remember you did that before we had sex for the first time? It made me laugh.’
‘Well, you couldn’t stop your hands from shaking, so I wasn’t the only one who was scared,’ Megan huffed.
‘Very true.’ Lucas leaned back, surveyed his room, trying to see it through her eyes. Did he look successful, interesting? Lonely? Or did he look like a sad old git with his papers to mark, his guitars sitting in the corner as if screaming out to the world that he never really played in that same way any more?
‘So….you’re a music teacher,’ Megan stated, pointing at the papers on the coffee table.
‘I know, right? I spend years trying to get out of that place and now I’m walking the halls again.’
‘Do you like it?’ Megan pulled her legs up underneath her, curling into the sofa. She liked to watch him, soaking in every detail of this new, grown up Lucas. Did he still pre-roll all his cigarettes and have them sitting in a little case? Did he still wake up at six am no matter what, before mumbling and falling asleep again? His eyes seemed bluer, and his face seemed hardened, that stubble that he never managed to fully remove still smudging around his jawline. He looked as dangerous as he had back then. He was the sinner, he said; she was the angel. And look how that turned out.
‘It’s fine. I can do it. It’s better than working in a factory,’ he shrugged.
‘But not as good as being a rock star.’
He grinned lazily, and she noticed that one dimple he always got on his left cheek, and felt a painful nostalgia. She felt like she was missing him, even though he was sitting there with her, looking at her, his arm reaching along the length of the sofa, his fingertips almost brushing her shoulder.
‘Did you not see me the other night? I’m still a rock star.’
‘Just three nights a week. Perfect compromise,’ Megan smiled, looking at his hand as his thumb gently reached her wrist, stroking the material of her jumper. She looked at him, questioning, but he just shrugged and smiled softly.
‘What about you? What did the great Megan McAllister go off and do to change the world? Besides creating a pretty special kid.’
‘I work with deaf kids,’ she smiled at him, ‘and I love it. I loved learning about it, I love working with these kids, creating programmes for them. Helping them through the implant process.’
‘That’s why Skye knows how to sign. You taught her?’ he asked, blinking.
‘Yeah. When I was pregnant I spent so much time trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do, and I didn’t have any time to waste. And then I remembered that time that Clare taught me how to say “horse”,’ Megan looped her fingers from her forehead down, as if making the shape of a horse’s head, ‘and how much she loved it, that I got it, that I got her…’ Megan shook her head, ‘and I guess I thought one day I would come back here and talk to her properly, and really know her. Like you did.’
Lucas breathed out, eyebrows raised. ‘Jesus, Meg. You come back after ten years without a word, and…all that?’
‘All what? She inspired me, that’s all.’
‘So you’d always planned to come back one day. Because you wanted to see my sister. Because you missed her. ’
‘It’s not like that, I’ve missed you too, but we’re…complicated. ’
‘Only because you made it that way, babe.’
She was looking at the floor when he said it, and it was as if she was seventeen again. As if he was just Lucas, asking why she was being difficult again. Why she hadn’t told her parents about the gig in Camden, and now his Mum was phoning him. Why she insisted on going down into the crowds during gigs when she knew the mic lead wouldn’t stretch that far. Why she had to go away to change the world, and she couldn’t do it from their shitty little village.
‘Do you think maybe I did this for you? To stop your life being ruined and your dreams being smashed?’ She put her cup down on the table, back straight, ready to fight.
‘Oh, how selfless of you to run off on Christmas morning after I’d asked you to spend your life with me. How kind of you to wait for me to tell you I loved you before you disappeared for ten years!’ Lucas made a face. ‘Grow up, would you? You weren’t protecting me.’
‘Well I thought you were going to leave this place and make something of yourself! If I’d have known you were going to throw it all away anyway, I might have stayed!’ she heard herself shout.
‘Megan…’ Lucas’s jaw was locked, and she knew he was holding back his anger. He’d never shouted at her, ever. But, she sort of wanted him to. ‘I’m here because I have a life here. I have family, friends. A steady career. I get